Website Hosting

What is Web Hosting?

Every website needs to sit on a server (i.e. hard drive) that is connected permanently to the internet. A hosting service provides you with the space you need to store your website, the “bandwidth” to make it available to all the people who want to look at it, and the resources you need to mange your site and your domain name (such as web statistics, email, FTP etc).

WebCare Web Hosting

WebCare hosts websites for its clients. Like all our services, our hosting provides value for money, backed by great service. We use cPanel for our client interface which gives easy access to a whole range of very important features like:

Setting up your email accounts

Checking your web statistics

Backing up your website

Forwarding emails

Redirecting pages of your website

Setting up an email autoresponder

Managing Add On Domains and Sub-Domains

Installing Scripts and Programs

How Much Space do I Need?

A very common question that our clients and internet business students ask is “how much space will I need to host my website?”. The answer for the vast majority of websites is “Not very much!”. To be more specific, the largest site we host uses 51mb of space and the smallest website uses less than 2mb. The average site uses about 12mb! We allocate 350mb to all our clients to start with, and when their needs change, we can quickly allocate more space at a small additional charge.

How Much Bandwidth do I Need?

This is another common question and the answer is very similar. For most websites, particularly in the time after their launch, they will not need very much bandwidth. Again, looking at our client records, our most popular client uses about 6% (120MB) of their 2GB (2000 MB) monthly allocation. The majority of our clients use about 50 MB (3%) of bandwidth per month! So, with an allocation of 2GB (2000MB) you will have plenty of room to grow your business. Of course, as soon as you need more bandwidth, we will immediately upgrade your account for a small additional charge.

What Else Do I Need to Know?

With any hosting account, you want to make sure that the “uptime” is as high as possible. Our servers have a 99.99% uptime guarantee – and they are backed up every 48 hours. So you are assured of continuity of service and risk management.

Where is the Server Located?

The server is located in a Data Center in Brisbane, Australia. This state of the art facility has multiple redundant features from power sources to data providers and switching equipment.
Using an Australian-based datacentre rather than the cheaper off-shore alternatives has two great advantages:

a) Speed – If your visitors will be mainly from Australia, then the site will load much more quickly from an Australian-based server (simply because the data has less far to travel and there are fewer possibilities for data to be interrupted)

b) More Traffic – If you are targeting the Australian market, then a site hosted on an Australian ranking will have a higher ranking than one located on an offshore server (all other things being equal).

Type of Server and Software

The hosting is in a Linux environment and has cPanel x3 installed. Server has PHP4.x and MYSQL.

Training Videos

We understand that “hosting” and all of the various things that you need to know to manage your website (email, FTP, redirections etc etc) are not necessarily easy to understand. So, we offer our clients more than 40 videos that show them how to use most of the features of their hosting account. Don’t know how to set up a new POP3 email account? No problem – just watch our video and it will walk you through the process. Don’t know how to set up Outlook to check your new email account? No problem – just watch the video. Want to know how to backup your website? Watch the video! And there’s more than 40 for you to watch!

How Much Per Month?

Now to the big question, how much does it cost to host your website with WebCare?

For $15 per month, your account will have 350MB of space and 2000MB of bandwidth.
For $20 per month, your account will have 500MB of space and 3500MB of bandwidth.
For $30 per month, your account will have 1000MB of space and 7000MB of bandwidth.
If you need more, just ask and we will work out a package to suit your needs.
There are no contracts, though we do bill 12 months in advance. If, at any time, you want to move to another host, that is no problem. Just let us know and we will refund any unused months.

Excess bandwidth is charged at $4 per GB. This will be charged three months in arrears. It is a good idea to keep an eye on your bandwidth usage through your hosting control panel (there is a graphic to the left hand side of your cPanel that displays both your bandwidth usage and disk space usage).

Shared IP vs Dedicated IP Address

An IP address is the physical location of a website and is a series of numbers like: 203.123.45.67. In shared hosting, multiple websites share the one IP address. A dedicated IP address means that one site (or hosting account) has its own IP address.

A shared IP address simplifies the technical aspects of hosting a website, and also keeps the costs down! The problem with a shared IP is that if someone on the same IP happens to get in trouble for spamming or scamming, your IP can get banned or blacklisted. You may not know that this has happened until your site disappears from the search engines or your email starts getting blocked by ISPs.

A dedicated IP address is the preferred option for larger businesses, especially those with a merchant account. There is also the SEO or search engine optimizations concerns to consider. It has been identified that sites with a dedicated IP address do mysteriously better in the search engine results than those with shared IPs.

So which one to get? A shared IP address is included in our standard $10 package. A dedicated IP address costs $70 per year plus $35 to install. You can always start off with shared IP hosting, then upgrade to a dedicated IP address when your site grows.

What Do I Need to Do to Get Started?

If you want to use WebCare’s hosting, just click on the “Order a Hosting Account” button above and we will set up your account straight away. We will then send you the details of your account set-up.

You will then need to re-delegate your domain name to the following:

ns1.webcare.biz
ns2.webcare.biz

If you have any questions or problems, just get in touch – we are only too happy to help. Call us for web hosting Adelaide, web hosting services Australia, Ecommerce web hosting Sydney, cheap web hosting Melbourne, discount web hosting Perth, Moodle hosting and dedicated website hosting services.